Friday, May 13, 2011

Supernova Quilt - and Blogger's Quilt Festival

OMG, Blogger's back! Did we all survive the outage? Just barely? Good, because I've got a quilt to show you. And if you're visiting my blog for the first time via the Blogger's Quilt Festival, welcome! Come on in, make yourself at home. : )

My Supernova quilt is complete. If this is your first visit here, a little background: This is my own design, which I originally made with the Hope Valley line. I had a few requests for the pattern, but since I've never written a pattern before, I decided to turn it into a quilt along. Click here to see this quilt in all the phases of its construction and to learn how to make your own, if you are so inclined.

I made this version from a mix of fabric lines, in a color palette loosely inspired by Heather Ross's Mendocino line. The background is Kona Coal and the binding is Michael Miller's Ta-Dot in Sunny Yellow.

There is a chance I may have gone slightly overboard with the quilting on this. : ) Dense straight-line quilting is something I've been wanting to try for a long time now, and I do like how it turned out. But while I was actually doing the quilting? I was this close to checking myself into the county mental health complex. So, while I'm happy with the end result, I don't think I'll be returning to this well very often. If at all.To make the converging lines pattern, I marked the center diagonals and started by quilting a big "X" from corner to corner. Then, using that "X" as my guide, I worked the quilt one quarter at a time, going from one edge/corner, up to the center, and back down to the other edge/corner, always using the previously stitched line as my guide for the next line. Sounds like a good way to do it, right? Wrong. My quilt got a bit distorted as I worked. The center of each edge of the quilt got pushed out, and as a result, the top is no longer square. It also won't lie quite flat! I'm not sure if it's a basting problem, or because I wasn't always stitching from the center out, or a combination of the two. Either way—not so good.

But I am very glad I did it—it's been a learning experience, that's for sure. And the fact that it doesn't lie flat doesn't actually bother me all that much, since it's not going on a bed. I love the colors, love the back, and love the look of the mental-institution quilting—now that it's finally done and I've stopped cursing at it.

But most of all, I LOVE that so many of you made Supernovas along with me. I really enjoyed taking you through the process of making this quilt. And I learned a lot about pattern writing in the process. It's been an invaluable experience! So without further ado, let's check out all the finished 'Novas:

Thank you for quilting along with me! If you haven't finished your quilt, or even if you haven't started yet, I hope you will still do so. The Flickr group will remain open, discussion can continue in the forums there, and I'm leaving the "Gallery of Completed Quilts" linky open permanently.

And this is a timely finish: I'm linking up to the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side! This is such a fun event—go check out all the beautiful quilts over there!

Stunning! I can't imagine doing all that machine quilting - you deserve a medal! I think I'd have plugged myslef into my ipod in an attempt to distract myself from the tedium! If the wave is bothering you (although I think it's fine!) could you try blocking it, like you do with knitting or crochet? Supernova has been added to my (rapidly growing) 'one day' list, thanks for the quilt along.P.S. I only seem to be able to post anonymously hjpurvis2002(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk

Wow, Lee, its simply gorgeous! I hear ya on the dense quilting, it is hard, tedious work but it does look great when its done! Love your mosaic of Supernovas, can't imagine how great you're feeling looking at all those quilts you inspired!

Holy moly, now that is some quilting! How far apart are those lines? That is definitely some dense quilting :) It looks amazing!! Thank you so much for sharing this quilt pattern with all of us as a quilt-along, it was SO much fun!!

Lee, I thought I would temporarily lose it when blogger was out. SO frustrating.

Okay, moving on. This Supernova is stunning. and the dense straight line quilting, I don't even know what to say about that. Amazing!

Supernova is a stunning pattern, and I'm doing mine with Hope Valley, like your original, but it sure has been fun to see all the fun variations, and must be very gratifying to you as the pattern designer.

Lee, it looks wonderful. I cannot imagine how cross eyed you must have been after sewing all those straight lines! Yikes! Love the back too. Great job!! And so fun to see the others that did it along with you. :)

Twenty finished Supernova's is great! You would have thought it would have increased MY chances of winning! <ggg) But I'm happy for the winner and that I have a finished project. Thank you again, Lee. If I knew your mailing address, you'd have a thank-you giftie from me.

I'll be showing my Supernova at the FIRST meeting of the Des Moines, Iowa, Modern Quilt Guild on May 19. Thanks for holding my hands through baby steps into Modern quilting!

P.S. I can understand how the dense quilting made the quilt distorted. But I hope you'll try this kind of quilting again - one that takes 100s of hours to complete - as I have done. Instead of "mental institution quilting" I highly recommend doing as I do: "audio book quilting!" My first intense FMQ experience was while listening to a Harry Potter book. Nothing beats listening to a great, UNabridged audio book. (I download mine from our public library, for free!) Thanks again for being so awesomely generous with your talent!

Rock star! It looks incredible--definitely worth the trouble. And I'm sure once it's gotten plenty of love and has been washed a few times it will flatten out. what did you use for the binding? Solid orange?

It must make you so proud to see all of our finished Novas in a row! It was a fantastic quilt-along. Thanks again!

LOL! Mental institution quilting indeed! Because, I know you are HARDLY busy, why not quilt the bejeezus out of that thing! Did it take you 30 hours? Well, time well spent, it looks amazing and you still seem coherent, so it's all good :-) ANd I L-O-V-E the back!

Love this!!! It is still on my to do list this summer! The quilting is great! I had a quilt that was densely quilted and it was a bit wiggly too! Nobody can tell if it is wrapped around you keeping you warm!!

This quilt really jumped out at me the first time I saw it - I'm definitely going to try it in the next few months, just got to clear up a few WIP's!Thanks so much for taking the time to do the Quilt along. It must've been quite a headache.

Your finished quilt is wonderful! I love the dense lines and I am glad you hung in to finish them. The mosaic also looks great! This pattern is one you can be so proud of, thank you for sharing it in the quilt along.

Oh my goodness!! It turned out so beautiful!! I can only imagine how mind numbing all that quilting was, but it really does look fantastic!! Great job, and thank you so much for doing the quilt a long! It was so fun!

I've just popped in for the first time. I've seen several of these on blogs and I'm so glad to know the person that started it!! I've never done straight line quilting - what would you do differently to prevent the distortion? Great quilt!!

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